Emmy gave her aunt a look of reproach: but by this time her sister had arrived with Mrs. Plowden’s ultimatum. ‘If the sun comes out mamma will call for you at the door, if you will please to be ready by three; but if it is overcast she will come in the fly. So that is all settled, I hope.’ Mab had maintained a great calm during all these searchings of heart. She was not going, and had she been going it would have been a matter of the greatest indifference to her, consciously a plain, and what is still more dreadful to the imagination, a fat girl, whether her hair was blown about or not, and what first impression Mrs. Swinford or even Leo Swinford might form of her. As for Leo Swinford, indeed, in face of the fact that he had called at the Cottage the night before, she felt for him something of that familiarity which breeds contempt: and how it could matter to anybody what he thought was to Mab’s youthful soul a wonder not to be expressed. ‘What are you so anxious about, after all?’ she said. ‘If your hair is untidy, what of that? Everybody in Watcham knows exactly how your hair looks, Emmy, whether it is just newly done and tidy, or whether it is hanging about your ears.’ ‘I hope it never hangs about my ears,’ said Emmy primly, yet with indignation. If there was one thing upon which she prided herself, it was the tidiness in which she stood superior over all her peers. ‘Oh, I’ve seen it, after an afternoon at tennis, just as wild as other people’s,’ said Mab, ‘and everybody in the village has seen it too.’ ‘But then,’ said the other sister, ‘these are not people in the village; they’re new people, and there’s a great deal in a first impression--at least, so Emmy thinks.’ ‘A first impression--upon whom?’ said Mab, with all the severity of her age. Seventeen, being as yet scarcely in it, is a severe critic of the ages over twenty which are in possession of the field. There was a pause, which Florence broke by one of her disconcerting laughs. ‘Mab, you are too much of a baby. Don’t you know the Swinfords are going to entertain? Perhaps you don’t know what that means. They are going to give all sorts of parties, and we’ll not be asked if--we don’t please.’ ‘Whom?’ said Mab again. And then there came another laugh from Florence, and an offended ‘What can you mean, Mab? Mrs. Swinford, to be sure. It is only she who could invite girls to make the house pleasant, and,’ said Emily, with a little dignity, ‘it is as much for you as for me.’ ‘Oh! I thought it might be Leo Swinford,’ said the audacious Mab, ‘who wants a wife, mother says. But he says himself no, he doesn’t want anything of the kind.’ ‘Mab!’ said Lady William, in a warning tone from behind. ‘He didn’t say it in any secret,’ said Mab, ‘not the least. He didn’t tell you “But this is between ourselves,” or “You won’t mention it,” or anything of the kind, as people say when they confide in you. He said it right out.’